Travel Blog Promotion Blog

Links and Link building

This article is taken from some training materials I use to get Interns up to speed quickly in link building. It assumes no prior knowledge of linking, so may seem simplistic for some, but I am sharing it here with you as I think it could be of value for those bloggers who are just getting started in link building and are overwhelmed by all the Jargon. Enjoy.

Links to a website are what carries most weight when it comes to ranking in google.
At its simplest : More links = Higher rankings.

Each link counts as a VOTE for a site from google.

What a link looks like:

<a href="http://www.mysite.com" title="Keyword">Anchor text</a>

-The title is what pops up when you hover over a link, it should describe what the link is, and it should also contain your keywords.
-Anchor text is the text that makes up the link, normally you will see it underlined as such : click here to visit site
-The Anchor text should contain your keywords. For example, when wishing to appear higher in google for the term "Barcelona apartment", every link with the words "barcelona apartment" as anchor text will help your site rank for this keyword. In the above example, if all our links looked like this, our site would rank highly when someone typed "Here" into google.

YOU MUST LEARN TO WRITE A LINK BY HAND, IT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT BIT OF HTML YOU WILL EVER LEARN.

Not all links are equal!

Each link is a vote for your site, however some links are worth more than others. There are several factors that affect this:

-The authority of the site/page you get a link from.
If you get a link from the front page of the New York Times, it will be worth much more than a link from a crap spammy directory. A rough measure of the importance of a site is PAGERANK (the green indicator on your toolbar) The higher the pagerank, the more valuable the link.

-Links from related sites are worth more than links from comparable non-related sites. For example, a link from a travel directory to a travel site will be worth more than a link from a directory of sites with vacuum cleaner companies to your travel site. Similarly, a link from a travel blog will be worth more than a link from an electrical appliance blog.

-Some links are NOFOLLOW. A no follow link looks like: <a href="http://www.mysite.com" title="mytitle" rel="nofollow">anchor text</a> This means that some search engines, including google, will not follow the link. In reality, they will follow the link, but they will not count it as a vote for your website. Yahoo does count this as a link.
HOWEVER, NOFOLLOW LINKS DO HAVE VALUE!! Remember, every link you build on the internet may be seen by a real person, so if it is not counted as a vote for your rankings by the search engines, it may still attract traffic directly from people. For example, reader tips in the New York Times travel section are nofollow, but they get a lot of human traffic, so are worthwhile getting.

Where to get links:

The best links are usually the hardest to get. First, we will look at easy links:


Website directories: websites that list other websites by category. Normally you can specify anchor text, add a description and sometimes a logo.
Business directories: Similar to website directories, but list businesses. Tend to have slightly more human traffic, hence added value.

Forums:

Join forums for topics related to your website. Self promoting your website is generally frowned upon in most forums, and will lead to your posts being deleted, and a bad reputation with other users.

The correct way to do forums:
Read the Posting guidelines for each forum, and abide by what is acceptable.
Add your keyword anchor text links to your signature, these will appear underneath every post you make.
Add value to the forum by answering questions, providing information, partaking in discussions. This will ensure you have lots of relevant posts, each with your search engine friendly anchor text link in your signature.
People reading the forums are who find your information usefull are likely to trust you more, and in turn trust your website more and click through.
FORUMS ARE A GREAT WAY OF BUILDING CUSTOMER TRUST AND PRESELLING SERVICES.

Examples:

Bad Post:

Q I want to stay in a hotel in the center of Barcelona near the tourist spots that is not to noisy. What do you recommend?
A: Rent a Barcelona Apartment. Our Company is the best company, you should not use hotels, and the other companies are rude and late with bad quality.

Good Post:
Q I want to stay in a hotel in the center of Barcelona near the tourist spots that is not to noisy. What do you recommend?
A There are several good hotels you can stay in, but bear in mind that Barcelona is a busy city and you will always have some noise if you stay in the center.
Hotel central gothic, clean and quiet.
Hotel Slightly Posher, great location, good price
Hotel Another hotel Both good location, and reasonably quiet.

Barcelona apartments Holiday apartments Barcelona


REMEMBER: You should aim to build up a good profile with many quality posts, be transparent, honest and open. People will respect your opinion more, meaning you will get more good quality traffic to your site.
People WILL check your profile and report spammy posts.
People will give more attention to answers from someone who has posted a lot, than someone with only 1 post and a spammy signature.

Blog Comments

Nearly every business has a blog these days, and many individuals blog about every topic under the sun. Most blogs allow comments, which are great places for links.

How to get a link from a blog:

Example comments form
Name: enter keyword (this usually creates a link with the name field as anchor text leading to the site you put in website, so adding your keyword here will give us a nice keyword anchor text link)
Website: http://www.yoursite.com
email:erm, enter your email
comment: Enter a comment that adds to the value of the post. This means reading the post, thinking of something interesting to say about it, and say it.

Most Blog comments are moderated, which means whoever writes the blog will check your comment before publishing it, so don´t waste your time spamming comments. Blog owners love getting comments, as they like that people are reading the blog. So read the blog, and make a suitable comment. This increases the chance you will get published.

Get creative thinking of what sort of blogs to post on, for example:
-Comment on blogs about events happening in the city, people may want accommodation /travel information etc etc.

Some good techniques:
-You will be writing articles for your own websites blog, so write an article about a related business service, and link to their site. Go to their blog, and leave a comment saying you have written an article on their business with a link to the page, they will publish it guaranteed, and may lead to them giving you another link from a prominent place on their site.

-If you find an interesting relevant blog that published your comment, become a regular reader and publish comments on more of their articles. This is best done organically, do not write comments on every singe one of their old posts all on the same day, this looks like spamming. Visit every once in a while and only leave comments when you have something to say. Remember, we want it to look natural and avoid spammy techiniques. Keep record of the best blogs in a spreadsheet, and note when you comment.

Article Directories

These are sites with articles listed by category. These articles can be used by other people on their own websites, on the condition they keep the author bio information whenever they republish it. You are normally allowed two or three anchor text keyword links in your bio box.
Article directories have a lot of traffic
Usually have high domain authority
You can create relevant content around your links
If you write a good article, it will get republished all over the web, multiplying the links you get to your site.

How to do article directories the right way

1- Write a good quality article. It is better to write one decent, interesting, well researched article that people may want to actually read than produce 5 pieces of pap that will barely pass the submission guidelines. Remember, actual humans may come accross your articles, and it will give a bad impression of the company. Your article should inspire people to find out more, to link to it, to put it on their own website. In the long run, you will get much better links this way.

2-Follow the guidelines! Read the submission guidelines and stick to them, otherwise you are wasting everybody´s time and the article will not be published.

3- Use your keywords in the title of the article

4- Use your keywords, but sparingly, throughout the article text. Use synonims of your keywords. This should look natural. If it looks like the keyword doesn´t fit in the sentence, try harder and rewrite to make it fit.

5- Check your spelling! There is nothing more unprofessional than badley spellt worrds, innit. It only takes a second to spell check your articles, so do it! Bonus points to anyone who spots spelling mistakes in this article.

6-Link your article to a page on your site with a similar title/same keywords for maximum ranking benefit. On this page on your site, link to the front page with the same anchor text. This passes the weight of the keyword all the way through to the page you actually want to have rank for it.

7-Ping your published article´s url using a service such as Pingomatic.com. This speeds up indexing of your article and your lovely juicy links.

8-Social bookmark your article. This will give the page with your article a little bit of authority to pass on, and speed up the indexing. Use the same keywords in your bookmark title and keyword as the article titles and keywords. This way, we get a cascade of similar titles and keywords flowing down to your site, passing link juice all the way to the page on your site you want to rank.

9-REREAD your article before submitting it. If you can´t read to the end without cringing with shame or falling asleep with boredom, then it is crap and you need to do it again.

10- Keep track in a spreadsheet of when your articles are submitted, and when they are published, so you don´t forget to bookmark/ping it.

How To Find such Sites

Google search
-Type in your keyword in google, then click "show options" at the top of the results. You will get a menu, where you can filter the results by date, relevancy, and type( such as discussion for forums, blogs, news) This will enable you to quickly find relevant, recent places to post.

-use advance queries, such as "submit site" with the commas, will pull a list of pages where you can submit a site, add a relevant keyword to narrow down, eg: "submit site" barcelona or "add site" "travel europe". Get creative! There are endless variation on this, do a search for "advanced google operators" to get a bigger list of ways to home in on suitable sites. You can search for sites by what is in their title, url etc etc.

-Look at your competitors backlinks. Type your keyword or phrase into google, then click on the first result. In your seo toolbar, click Show backward links->Domain external only->Yahoo site explorer. This will give a list of all the backlinks yahoo knows of for this site. Go through one by one, normally you can link from a great many of the same pages. Do this for the top 5 or so sites.

-Look at sites for sale websites such as Flippa or digitalpoint market place. Find sites for sale with related theme, and check their backlinks. Most of the sites on here have been created and ranked quite quickly, so the links will normally be quite good ones. See if you can get links from them as well.

-Look at backlinks to sites you have got links from, and get links from them as well.